My Pesach education: at home

Hwell as a chutzpah. I acquired a few not-useful skills, including how to shake a lulav. But I failed to grasp the important stuff: at age 11 some classmates were already making good money organising illegal delivery of non-kosher cakes from the nearby village and selling them at upwards of 100 per cent profit. Meanwhile I was wasting my time studying. That’s why they became Napoleons of commerce and I am where I am today.

I experienced many a school Yom Kippur but never a school Pesach. If the school had done Pesach, fees would have been even more extortionate. Imagine the cost in crockery and cutlery alone. Come to think of it, Carmel College had a poor relationship with the Season Of Our Freedom. In 1997, disgracefully and without notice, it was announced on erev Pesach that the school would close for ever. It being Yomtov nobody was available to be questioned by the press — a good day to bury bad news under a pile of matzah.

So Seder night is the only important Jewish ceremony I learnt only at home, not at school. I wonder how it would have been there. You’ll remember the bit in the Haggadah where the five rabbis talk about the Exodus all night until a student comes and tells them it’s time for the morning Shema.

Who’s to say it wouldn’t have been like that? There were plenty of frummers who would have wanted to chuck in their two zuzimworth.

The scene at home was rather different. In Little Britain, Matt Lucas was the only gay in the village; at home we – the five of us – were the only Jews. My father whipped through the Haggadah at quite a lick –he was very fluent – the Four Questions were asked, the songs were sung. The charoset was good – apple, cinnamon etc (long before Claudia Roden confused the issue with a whole world of charoset recipes). It wasn’t a lengthy affair. My brothers were quite small. I think it’s fair to say there wasn’t too much talk about the Exodus. If a student had come in to tell us enough was enough, it would probably have been in time for the Nine O’Clock News. Then, the following night we did it all over again, but a bit quicker.

I moved away a lifetime ago but the seed was planted and it took root. Seder is the only Jewish event I’ve never missed. This year, for the first time in half a century, I am having two Seders (it’s a question of numbers). Two is a nonsense really and has been ever since we were sure we knew what time it was in Israel. I’ve looked at the Chabad website and what they say about the status of the second Seder is pathetic.

I am more taken with the notion in the Kabbalah that we need two Seder nights in the diaspora to equal the spirituality of one in Israel. The only problem is that I suspect in my case I’d need three. OW DID my Jewish boarding school equip me for life? It taught me that when it was chicken for dinner it was always just legs for us, because all the breasts went to hotels in Bournemouth — a metaphor as